Effective integration and utilization of information is key to today's research institutions and business enterprises. A variety of tools have been made available publicly or commercially for building, deploying, and managing enterprise data warehouses and other data integration projects. Such tools enable the transformation of data from disparate enterprise systems and sources into useful information to support research undertakings and business initiatives. See, e.g., Informatica® PowerCenter® and Informatica® PowerCenterRT™ (http://www.informatica.com/products/powercenter/default.htm). The real time data integration software such as Informatica® PowerCenterRT™ may be particularly useful in combining transactional data generated by, e.g., online systems and EAI applications, with historical information stored in enterprise databases or warehouses.
However, to manage and track dynamic changes of data, coordinate and control deployment of data objects to one or more enterprise databases, data marts, or warehouses, and support consistent user access to updated versions of data objects, there remains a need for a methodology for effective identification and management of changes of database objects in an enterprise information environment.